​Do the twerk

‘Work, work, work, work, work…’ Daisy and Dane sing it softly, but unmistakably. ‘You see me I be work, work, work, work, work’. Their teacher responds irritated: ‘You don’t know what is work!’ The pupils do not agree: ‘Yes teacher, we know!’ The teacher questions them: ‘how old this song is?’ he asks. A lively discussion erupts amongst the pupils: ‘two weeks? No, three weeks. Maybe two and a half teacher!’ With a twinkle in his eyes the teacher says: ‘I just wanted to make a point that you do know this. But the work I give you, you can never remember!’ He looks at me, as he often does when he speaks on a meta-level about the lack of work-ethic of his pupils. I smile.

Later, when the teacher has left the room, the two are standing in front of the chalkboard and sing again: ‘Work, work, work, work, work’. This time they do not only sing Rihanna’s song but also dance the way she can. With their movements they alert me to an alteration they make in the text. What they are singing is: ‘twerk, twerk, twerk, twerk, twerk’. They move their pelvis front and back rhythmically. Soon, others pupils join: boys and girls, big butts and small butts. Everybody twerks.

A lively discussion about female bodies, sexy dancing, and cultural appropriation ensued from Miley Cyrus’ performance at the MTV awards in 2013, where she twerked live on stage. Twerking was suddenly a trending topic. Some were proud of ‘their’ dance becoming mainstream, while others felt their culture had been taken from them and stripped of its original meaning. Lucille Toth proposes that twerking, rooted in African dance but as dance-form originating in the New Orleans projects, should be understood as ‘urban terrorism that forces people to witness the ways in which woman reclaim public spaces through the motion of their bodies’ (2017: 293). Also, twerking emphasizes large butts, and thereby challenges Western beauty standards and the relationship between fit, strong bodies and capitalist/imperialist exploitation.

Does Toth’s interpretation make sense in the classroom on Sint Maarten? At first glance Daisy and Dane seem to merely imitate the moves and songs they encounter on television. However, why do they choose to work/twerk then and there? In Stuart Hall’s terms, twerking is a form of popular culture that challenges the powers that be: their teacher. He forces the pupils to do maths. This is not only a subject that most pupils find no joy in, most of them also do not have any use for being able to measure and name angles. So instead of doing work, they twerk. Or maybe the twerking is the real work. Because with their dance, they ask me, and those in charge of the curriculum, to review the lessons pupils are taught and the ways in which this is done. Is education a factory in which passive laborers are produced? Or can education help youngsters become the critical and creative citizens that Sint Maarten and the world need so badly.